you have to understand racist effect of colonialism - intended or not. With western based colonial structures gaining ascendancy in late 1800s to 1960s, literacy de facto came to mean literate in western languages (or literate in native languages using western letters/alphabest). In many places, that remained the accepted definition of literacy even after the French/English/Portguese colonialists left. So it is very possible, that the author's dad would have been considered illiterate even though he was indeed very literate in a language and writing structure that is not western at all.
Do you really believe the racist effect of colonialism would cause this academic to not realize that his own father was producing Arabic script, which he himself is fluent in, on a regular basis? I don't doubt that a bunch of people may have been incorrectly classified as illiterate, but the personal narrative of this story makes no sense.
